ISCB Affiliated Groups
| NORTH AMERICA |
Contact: Daisuke Kihara; This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Lonnie Welch; This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Russell Schwartz; This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Geographical area included: Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, Ontario, Pennsylvania, Quebec, and Wisconsin
Leadership Structure: Conference Steering Committee:
Bruce Aronow, Children's Hospital Medical Center, University of Cincinnati
Gary Bader, University of Toronto
Robert Blumenthal, University of Toledo
Sarath Chandra Janga, Indiana University Purdue University
Sorin Draghici, Wayne State University
Bruno Gaeta, University of New South Wales (Ex Officio)
Anthony Gitter, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Daisuke Kihara, Purdue University
Dan Knights, University of Minnesota
Jundong Liu, Ohio University
Tijana Milenkovic, University of Notre Dame
Chad Myers, University of Minnesota
John Parkinson, Hospital for Sick Children
Catherine Putonti, Loyola University
Predrag Radivojac, Northeastern University
Sushmita Roy, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Russell Schwartz, Carnegie Mellon University (Co-chair)
Lonnie Welch, Ohio University (Co-chair)
2023 GLBIO Program Chairs:
Aïda Ouangraoua, Université de Sherbrooke
Jeff Xia, McGill University
Shaun Mahony, Pennsylvania State University
Publication Chairs:
Shaun Mahony, Pennsylvania State University
Poster Chairs:
Guenter Tusch, Grand Valley State University
Travel Fellowship Chairs:
Serdar Bozdag, University of North Texas
Layla Oesper, Carleton College
Goals: The Great Lakes Bioinformatics Consortium strives to enhance educational opportunities and research infrastructure throughout the region, to make the Great Lakes a world leader in bioinformatics and to facilitate new discoveries in data-intensive biological research. The Consortium has chosen to center its activities on the Great Lakes Regional Bioinformatics Conference (GLBio), and to accomplish its goals as an affiliate society through that meeting. This includes providing a venue for regional scientists and other interested attendees to meet and share research results, providing a platform for discussion of topics of shared interest through conference activities and special sessions, and providing opportunities for students to present their work at a local scientific meeting and to interact with other scientists and potential future employers.
Brief history: Over the past decade, there have been 3 independent initiatives that have culminated in this proposal to form the Great Lakes Bioinformatics Consortium. Starting in 2002, there was a Michigan-based "Great Lakes Bioinformatics Retreat" that was sponsored and hosted by the Michigan Center for Biological Information (MCBI) a Michigan Life Science Corridor-funded initiative led by Dr. Brian Athey. This program held yearly retreats, from 2002-2006, with keynote speakers, and student oral presentations; the locations were primarily in Michigan. There was a board of directors for a proposed Great Lakes Bioinformatics Consortium that first convened in August 2004 and consisted of representatives from most of the great lakes bioinformatics programs which are outlined in this proposal. The Consortium did not reach critical mass, and may have been too Michigan-centric; however, there remains a strong interest in regional networking and collaboration, and professional engagement.
A second initiative is the Midwest Symposium on Computational Biology and Bioinformatics. MSCBB is an ongoing conference series, which held 1-day meetings in Illinois in 2007 and 2008, attracting over 300 attendees. The meetings included keynote speakers, invited talks, and student poster presentations. Merit-based student poster awards were given during the meetings. Registration fees were waived, to encourage the participation of students. Future meetings are planned. The MSCBB Chair is Prof. Ping Ma of University of Illinois, and the conference committee consists of faculty from universities in Indiana, Illinois and Michigan.
A third initiative was created in Ohio. Ohio researchers, educators, and industry leaders collaboratively organized the annual Ohio Collaborative Conferences on Bioinformatics (OCCBio), with its inaugural meeting in June 2006. In August 2007, the OCCBio conference leadership formally united to form the Ohio Bioinformatics Consortium; OBC leveraged the existing statewide research community to enhance Ohio’s role in bioinformatics education and research. In May 2008 the consortium was awarded $9M from the University System of Ohio and 12 academic institutions. The funds provide scholarships for five years to hundreds of graduate and undergraduate students who study bioinformatics in universities across the state of Ohio.
Activities:
The Great Lakes Bioinformatics Consortium devotes itself primarily to running the GLBio conference, which occurs annually with some exceptions (e.g., when ISMB is held in the Great Lakes region). The meeting serves as an annual meeting for tutorials, and oral and poster presentations of new research. The meeting will also serve as an informal communication and networking forum for the professional development of members (faculty and students). We believe that by bringing together the Great Lakes bioinformatics community on a regular basis, many new initiatives will be born. It was decided that the meeting would be canceled when ISMB is in the Great Lakes Region (2018 and 2020) in favor of a virtual presence at ISMB.
Currently, we are preparing for GLBIO 2023, which will be held in Montreal, Canada (https://www.iscb.org/glbio2023). This is primarily an in-person conference.
Activities and programs that demonstrate the advancement of bioinformatics and computational biology:
The Consortium's activities are centered on the GLBio conference. Information on the previous GLBio meetings can be found here:
https://www.iscb.org/glbio2019
https://www.iscb.org/glbio2021
https://www.iscb.org/glbio2023 (current)
Last Updated April 19, 2023
Contact: Inimary Toby-Ogundeji
President, MCBIOS
Assistant Professor, Biology
University of Dallas | Constantin College of Liberal Arts
1845 E Northgate Dr | Patrick E. Haggerty Science Bldg #141
Irving, TX 75062 | Ph. 972-721-5109
Geographical area included: Mid-South (United States)
Leadership Structure: Link to current leadership is available on our website at the following link: https://www.mcbios.com/board-of-directors/
Leadership comprise of the following:
Presidential office (president, president-elect, and past president)
Board of Directors
Secretary
Treasurer
Student Representative
Goals: 20 years ago, MCBIOS was formed. The mission of MCBIOS is to foster networking and collaboration and to promote the professional development of members and supporting our student members.
In its early years, the MCBIOS organization began as a grassroots effort spearheaded by a group of researchers. The first set of annual conferences were organized within the Mid-South regions which had large representation of members in the society. The support by INBRE and FDA in providing funds for the annual conferences has been unwavering over the years. In addition, board members worked together on securing venues and speakers to highlight the growing areas of expertise within the field. The organization is 100% volunteer based and there are no paid staff members. In the recent years, the addition of a part time webmaster was critical to enable website management and a graduate shift to provide the society with a new face lift online. Social media handles were organized for the society and are managed by the student representation along with support from the communications committee.
The purposes of the Society are scientific, educational, literary, charitable, and no other. In furtherance of these purposes, the business and objectives of the Society shall be
(a) to advance the understanding of bioinformatics and computational biology;
(b) to bring together scientists of various backgrounds and disciplines;
(c) to facilitate the collaboration of researchers with similar or complementary backgrounds to solve biological, health, and/or medical problems;
(d) to promote education in bioinformatics and computational biology;
(e) to inform the general public on the results and implications of current research in bioinformatics and computational biology; and
(f) to promote other activities that will contribute to the development of bioinformatics and computational biology.
The Society will especially support, encourage, and mentor our Trainee Members.
Activities:
The 2022 conference was held online (100% virtual) and there were 133 attendees.
Over the past year, we have hosted a series of monthly workshops with invited speakers (virtual sessions) which have attracted more than 50 attendees in each session. We have organized our proceedings publications from the 2022 conference.
Our publication committee overseas the review process and provides the editorial paper to accompany the proceedings at the end of the review process for all papers. We also continually conduct monthly board meetings and conference planning meetings.
Our communications committee ensures all updated events information is also provided on each of our social media channels. Our efforts within communication over the past year have centered on building up our presence on social medical platforms (Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram).
We further supported the annual conference 2022 by providing monetary awards to winners of the poster competition and the young scientists in excellence oral competition.
Activities and programs that demonstrate the advancement of bioinformatics and computational biology:
The 19th Annual Meeting of MCBIOS will be held on the campus of University of Dallas with the theme of "Big Data and Artificial Intelligence for Genomics and Therapeutics" from March 15-17, 2023. This conference will be our first 100% in-person meeting since 2019. We are anticipating ~100 attendees.
There will be scientific sessions on broad topics including: Deep-Learning in Precision Medicine and Drug Safety Evaluation, Immuno-Oncology and Single Cell Multi-omics, Network medicine and Drug Discovery and Emerging tools for “omics” studies. We will be hosting a special workshop sponsored by Amazon on the AWS Sagemaker during the conference. We will also be hosting an industry roundtable discussion forum which will include invited speakers from DFW area Biotech companies.
We will be providing monetary awards for trainees competing in the poster and oral young scientist competition at the 2023 conference. We will have trainees at the undergraduate, graduate and post-doctoral level compete in these competitions.
In addition, we are also providing travel stipends for trainees with financial need in order to travel to present their work. Honorariums will be given to keynote speakers and plenary speakers. We anticipate a discounted publishing rate for presenting authors who submit their full-length manuscript for publication to the proceedings journal.
Last Updated February 22, 2023
Contact: Yalbi Itzel Balderas Martínez
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
tel: +52 777 2238266.
Geographical area included: Mexico
Leadership Structure: Dr. Irma Martínez-Flores, president
Dr. Yalbi I. Balderas Martínez, secretary
Dr. Gerardo Corzo, treasurer
Dr. Irma Martínez-Flores teaching node leader
Dr. Julio Collado, honorific member
MSc. Shirley Alquicira, administration
Dr. Yalbi I. Balderas Martínez, membership node leader
Dr. Alejandra Medina Rivera financial resources node leader
Dr. Dulce Valdivia, membership assistant
Dr. Michael Jeziorsky, Dr. Raúl Baptista, Dr. Selene Fernández Valverde, MSc. Alfredo Hernández courses organizer
Dr. Joselyn Chavez, CDSB organizer
MSc. Jair García, social network manager
Dr. Alfredo Varela, MSc. César Bonavides, Founder member
Goals: The BioNetMX emerged in 2018 as the interests of a group of scientists to unify the different groups doing bioinformatics in the country. The formalization of the network became real in July of that year with the participation of students and junior and senior researchers.
The BioNetMX has as a mission to foster the development and expansion of the bioinformatics culture in Mexico, under ethical principles of collective and organized interaction, and the vision to become a model for collaboration in bioinformatics that can be imitated by other networks in Mexico and Latin America.
Activities:
ISCB-Latin America SoIBio BioNetMX Conference on Bioinformatics 2022
Bioinformatics Network Mexico (RMB)
Iberoamerican Society of Bioinformatics (SoIBio)
International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB)
Short 2-3 hour courses:
Introducción a ggplot- Dra. Elizabeth Valles (colaboración con Rladies México)
Introducción a Unix - M. en C. Dulce Irene Valdivia Martínez (miembro RMB)
Manipulación de tibbles con herramientas del Tidyverse - M. en C. David Felipe Rendón Luna (colaboración con el NNB-CCG)
Introducción a R: Filosofía vectorial y estructuras de control - M. en C. David Felipe Rendón Luna (colaboración con el NNB-CCG)
Redes de Coexpresión Genética con WGCNA - MCC. Cynthia G. Soto Cardinualt
Introducción al análisis de redes biológicas en R - Dr. Oscar Fontanelli
Introducción a Pythonpara datos biológicos – Lic. Marisol Navarro Miranda
Week-long workshops:
Assembling and annotation of genomes and metagenomes.
Introduction to R and RStudio.
Workflows with RStudio and creating Shiny apps.
2022 European Conference on Computational Biology
“Creating paths for the development and application of bioinformatics in Mexico”
Activities and programs that demonstrate the advancement of bioinformatics and computational biology:
Mensual mini courses
Collaborations (UUSMB, CDSB, NNB-CCG, Rladies México)
Last Updated July 03, 2023
